1757-12-19: (Philippe Guerrier, Born Into Slavery, Revolutionary War Veteran, the First Black President of a Unified Haiti Since Dessalines, Brought to Power…

1757-12-19: (Philippe Guerrier, Born Into Slavery, Revolutionary War Veteran, the First Black President of a Unified Haiti Since Dessalines, Brought to Power by the Piquets Revolt of 1844, Whose Attempts to Help the Black Majority Were Blocked by the Mulatto Elite Until His Death in Office): Philippe Guerrier was born into slavery in Grand-Rivière-du-Nord on December 19, 1757. He fought in the Haitian Revolution and afterward retired to his plantation. When Henri Christophe created a northern nobility, Guerrier was made a duke. His ascent to the presidency came through crisis: in April 1844, a Black former army officer named Louis Jean-Jacques Acaau launched the Piquets Revolt, overthrowing mulatto president Charles Rivière-Hérard in May. The Piquets demanded an end to mulatto rule and the election of a Black president, and Guerrier, by then elderly but symbolically important, was brought to power as the first Black president of a unified Haiti since Dessalines. His efforts to improve conditions for the Black majority were systematically obstructed by the mulatto elite who still controlled the economy and the bureaucracy. He died in office on April 15, 1845. His brief presidency illustrated a pattern that would recur throughout Haitian history: Black political power constrained by mulatto economic power, the caste system of the colony reproducing itself within the structures of the republic.